Immediatism Podcast 78: Can Anarchism Be Saved? by Aragorn!

Cover of the book The Bastard Chronicles 2018

If anarchism (by which I mean anarchy over time) is anything it is a system of ideas that is so persuasive as to not need to persuade, so informal as to not need a foundation, church, or organization, and so beautiful as to not have to be explained. Why is it then that so many former anarchists turn away from the term? ... Can anarchism be saved and should it be?

This is a workshop talk given by Aragorn! to open 2018's Bastard Conference. It is available through LittleBlackCart.com in The Bastard Chronicles 2018: Hyphenated Anarchisms. Here it is read for you as Immediatism podcast episode 78.

https://immediatism.com/podcast/78-can-anarchism-be-saved-by-aragorn-bas...

There are 8 Comments

that throw-away comment at the end really struck me (typical!)...
thinking about how the internet has changed us, is changing us, will change us... the line about how such easy access to a certain amount of knowledge tends away from us committing, as it provides the subtextual sense that any commitment is premature...
such a good point.
thanks cory.

Thanks for positive feedback. Yes, the comment has stuck with me over the couple of days since re-reading his talk.

I would start off by saying that in regards to the internet and anarchism it depends on which historical period of the internet you are talking about. The web 1.0 era, particularly the first half from, say, 1995-2001 or so actually helped anarchism on a purely informational level. You still had that combined with 90s genX era meat space. The erosion of brick and mortar meetup combined with the technical progress and speed of the internet are what co-factor in this malaise but there's another factor that the late A(damn) does not mention.

The elective associations that anarchism made overtime in heading into the 90s and continuing into today. I'm talking mainly about the rise of intersectional ideology(intsects as I call them) and the institutionalization of leftism. THIS has also been a big co-factor(I would say bigger) in the decline of anarchism to a living counterculture. I think it's interesting to bring up ancaps in this regard. Ancaps have actually retained a countercultural identity. Why is that? I think it has to do with them being-in the last 50+ years or so) centrist bellwether extremists. Think about it, anarchists were more countercultural when then they had relationships with those types. It was when anarchism supported intersectional ideology full bore and gave up on those older relationships from the late 60s-early 90s that it lost that edge. I'm not saying ancapism is some solution or anything, but they do have a consistent position against centralized states that SOME anarchists-of the red and black or intsect variety-could learn from. Intsect ideology is actually helping to destroy anarchism because anarchism is comporting itself to institutional radicalism which is of course not radical at all. Some of us(like me and Bellamy for instance) figured this out and made the necessary discursive adjustment.

Speaking of B, he's doing what A should have spent the last 5-10 years of his life doing, rejecting the left concretely by rejecting the values and analysis that flowed out of the institutional left. You can do this and still be pomo anti-mo pro-queer ect. It simply means that elective affinity trumps what is essentially a Noah's Arc approach to achieving one big universal identity structure which is what the practice of the intsect amounts to. This is without even mentioning the flawed concepts(white supremacy and privilege ect) to go along with all that maoist marxoid marcusean critical theory psychology, procedure ect. It's all amounted to a configurative control based discourse. If anarchism can just divorce themselves of these intsects and strike up relations with tendencies that are actually libertarian it will be in a better place.

To finish off on the internet, there might be some good things coming down the road. I'm very interested in what the affect of virtual reality live meeting forums and spaces will bring about. There's potential far less turd flinging in that context when there might be something of a return to the face to face stuff albeit mediated by machinology. The current age of anarchism is where the last age was heading into ww2. It has to shed the bad stuff away and this includes dissociating from the fucking intsects.

I don't see the point of keep bringing "anarch"-caps for this debates... We all know that capitalism today is even more effective if descentralized, the same for the state and law enforcement... Does this make them belonging to the same spectre as anarchists? No. If you put your focus on the goals, concepts and ethics concerning individual, collectivity and nature there is nothing in common. Why pretend there is some kinship?

"Some of us(like me and Bellamy for instance) figured this out and made the necessary discursive adjustment."

yes, 2 academic word-sprayers have all the right answers. at least bellamy has tried to create his own sustainable lifeway.

There's numerous reasons why me an others can't go to his resilient off grid lengths of life. However let that not lead to a look who's talking fallacy. Also, having intellectually acute language does not mean you are academic. Intellection precedes the academy(autodidacts, polymaths, the stuff before the academy ect). It's not about having the right answers but pointing out stuff which is clearly wrong such as anarchism comporting itself to institutional intsect pseudo radicalism.

The final stage of the metamorphosis. From the wilderness, the camel and lion have spent themselves asserting dominion and autonomous sovereignty, now he must become the child-master, or Anarch-Domesticatus.

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